This invention relates to the control of access to communication facilities and in particular to audio conferencing facilities. Such facilities provide the capability for a number of users to participate in a telecommunications session by connecting through a single point of contact. Typically this is achieved by arranging for each user to establish connection to a conference call platform. The platform provides a bridge through which all the participants can be connected so that each one can hear everything said by the others. The platform may provide facilities to prevent cross talk, feedback, etc, and may provide a spatialisation capability to allow different participants' voices to seem to emanate from different directions relative to a listener.
Simple three-way calling can be achieved in many networks by one of the parties to an existing two-way call establishing a second call, to a third party, and then setting up a “bridge” between the calls. The addition of a fourth or subsequent party, if possible at all, requires the initiating party to set up individual calls to each one, which is cumbersome. Moreover, this facility is of limited application as the initiating party must remain on the call even if the other two parties want to continue without him. The third and subsequent parties do not initiate their own participation but have to be called in. In contrast, dedicated conferencing facilities provide a bridge into which each intending user may connect, making it possible for each user who intends to participate to dial in to a previously-advised number when he is ready. The burden of setting up and controlling the conference is largely passed to the network-based conferencing facility, rather than being the responsibility of one of the participants.
Two classes of conferencing facility are typically available, known as booked and reservationless types. In a booked system, such as that described in U.S. patent application US2004/0125933 (Peng Jun et al), the organiser sets up the conference in advance and advises invitees of the access details (the number to dial and any passcode). The call may be limited to nominated participants. This arrangement is secure, but requires advance notification to all proposed participants. It also ensures that capacity is available at the time agreed for the conference—if capacity is not available at the desired time, a user's attempt to make a reservation will fail. He can of course attempt to reserve at some other time, and whatever time he is eventually able to reserve is guaranteed. The use of access control requires the participants to remember, or record, the access details, and to enter them when the conference is to be joined. This can be inconvenient, for example if the user is in a situation where the user is mobile and does not have passcode information readily available to him.
Another difficulty is that a host typically does not have visibility to his attendees' calendars as these may operate within a separate scheduling interface (typically a web-based interface such as Microsoft Outlook®), which may be incompatible with the one used by the host (chairman) to set up the conference. Consequently, the host must have either previously checked invitees' calendars before booking, or must book the conference without being certain that the required attendees will be available. Moreover, if a meeting time has to be altered after the initial booking has been made, then the host must make the update in both the conference interface and the scheduling interface.
Reservationless conference systems require an attendee simply to dial in to a reservationless conference using a static and predetermined passcode. This number may of course be stored on a “soft key” on the handset if used regularly, to avoid the need to dial a large number of digits. Such a system is suitable for less structured situations, where conference hosts do not wish to pre-book the facility but wish to have the use of the facility whenever they need it. However, without a reservation system there can be no guarantee that there will be adequate capacity at the required time—the system has to arbitrate between competing requests, whether on a “first come, first served” basis, or by giving priority to certain individual users (potentially resulting in premature termination of other users' conferences).
Furthermore, the call flow in existing reservationless systems is very cumbersome to conference hosts. The standard CISCO “MeetingPlace” system requires the conference host to enter two pieces of information—Profile Number and Profile Password—as well as intermediate DTMF entries to confirm what was entered. This lengthy entry process for hosts often leads to increased amount of helpdesk assistance to start meetings and also leads to customer dissatisfaction. For mobile users, the complexity of access makes it difficult to perform this call flow on a small mobile phone where key strokes are not always ergonomically easy.
Another disadvantage of the reservationless type is that, once the access code is provided to a participant to a particular conference call, that participant has access to any subsequent conference calls run by the same host, whether or not he is invited. To prevent such gatecrashing, the user would have to change his passcode, and advise the new code to all intended participants of further conferences, thereby negating one of the potential advantages of the reservationless type.
It would be desirable to provide users with Email Client “Plug-in” applications for scheduling of one-time conferences. This type of plug-in would allow a user to schedule a conference from within the process of creating a calendar invitation, rather than scheduling the conference via a separate interface and then copying the booked details into the calendar invite. However, this requires either the development, maintenance, and upgrading of a specific mail client plug-in application for each mail client type, or the deployment and use of a conference bridge manufacturer's client application. In the latter case, the mail client plug-in would communicate directly with the bridge platform, so the service provider would not have central visibility of the meeting being scheduled for that bridge. This can lead to a variety of operational issues, such as passcode conflicts where the core reservation system issues a passcode that has already been created by the bridge for a mail client booking request that went directly to the bridge.
Therefore, although the mail client scheduling plug-in application offers an attractive benefit to customers, the support costs to the service provider are significant and not easily scalable.
The present invention provides an alternative approach to the provision of conferencing facilities that overcome these difficulties, and provides many of the capabilities of both booked and reservationless conferences in a single unified system.
Access to a teleconferencing system is granted to a prospective attendee (1) for a predetermined duration, by dating the user for access to the facilities (107) for a predetermined duration, and allocating resources (110) to the user for the predetermined duration. This duration can be defined in terms of an expiry date, or a predetermined number of separate occasions for which access to the facilities is permitted, or a combination of both. To allow a user to break out of a conference and rejoin it, multiple accessions within a predetermined period (such as one day) may be counted as a single accession in counting towards the predetermined number of accessions. Different users may be validated for use of the same resources for different durations. This arrangement provides many of the existing capabilities of both booked and reservationless conferences in a single unified system. A reservationless conference facility can be emulated by specifying a very large permitted number of calls, or an expiry date in the distant future. To emulate a booked call, an individual attendee can be limited to just one accession, or to a very limited time range. Unlike a conventional booked call, the actual conference time can be rescheduled, provided it remains within the selected constraints. To encourage responsible use of the reservation facilities, allocation of resources may be prioritised for users having the most restricted duration of access. In particular, the guarantee of availability for a pre-booked call can be emulated by the prioritisation of calls for which the permitted users have the most restricted validity terms. This provides a form of demand-management, as the network can identify the number of passcodes valid at any one time and schedule resources accordingly.
According to the invention, a prospective attendee is given access to a conference facility for a predetermined duration. Specifically, there is provided a method of allocating telecommunications facilities for the execution of a conferencing function, comprising the steps of validating a user to permit access to the facilities for a predetermined duration selectable by the user, allocating the resources to the user for the predetermined duration, and connecting said resources to the user, in response to commands from the user, on one or more occasions before the expiry of the predetermined duration. This duration can be defined in terms of an expiry date, or a predetermined number of separate occasions that access to the facilities is permitted, or a combination of both. To allow a user to break out of a conference and rejoin it, multiple accessions within a predetermined period (such as one day) may be counted as a single accession in counting towards the predetermined number of accessions. Different users may be validated for use of the same resources for different durations.
To encourage responsible use of the reservation facilities, allocation of resources may be prioritised for users having the most restricted duration of access.
The invention also embraces a telecommunications conferencing facility comprising a provisioning facility for allocating resources to a user and a validation processor for creating validation information, wherein the provisioning facility and validation processor control access to the resources such that the user is permitted access to the resources on one or more occasions before the expiry of a predetermined duration selectable by the user. A timer and/or counter may be employed to disable access after elapse of a predetermined period or number of accessions.
In the preferred embodiment access is authorised by issuing a passcode having a limited validity term which may be defined either in terms of an expiry date, or by the number of separate occasions that access will be permitted, or a combination of both. A reservationless conference facility can be emulated by specifying a very large permitted number of calls, or an expiry date in the distant future. To emulate a booked call, an individual attendee can be limited to just one accession, or to a very limited time range. Advantageously, and unlike a conventional booked call, the actual conference time can be rescheduled, provided it remains within the selected constraints.
The booking process is much simplified, as the conference host does not need to define the exact conference details (date, time), only one “expiration date” needs to be selected.
Another feature of booked calls, the guarantee of availability, can be partially emulated by the prioritisation of calls for which the permitted users have the most restricted validity terms. This provides a form of demand-management, as the network can identify the number of passcodes valid at any one time and schedule resources accordingly. Prioritising the most restricted-validity passcodes would discourage profligate use of passcodes with unnecessarily extensive validity